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– discovered Replacement Press and Dark Sky Magazine. Be sure you check out Replacement Press’s why we exist page; I’m always interested in the why when another independent press or literary magazine comes about. Is there a reason other than, oh… we just wanted to make one of our own? RP has a good answer. As for Dark Sky, I really like what I see. They post weekly, they’re interested in brevity when it comes to the stories and poetry, and I like how they interweave the works they publish on their Web site with the editors’ posts — which are really great reads. They’re currently holding their first poetry contest and accepting submissions for their first print issue, out January 2010.

– bought a six-month subscription at mudluscious. Appears to be an AWESOME deal: for $36, you get 18 chapbooks — 3 a month — plus a copy of WE TAKE ME APART by Molly Gaudry, which I am dying to read.

– cleaned out my room and reorganized my books by gunpoint — aka my mother. My bookcase has been full since I was 16 and it’s gotten astronomically worse since college. I had books in stacks everywhere: on both dresses, on the floor in front of my book case, closet, on top of books already shelved in the bookcase. So we took a three-tiered rolling rack that I found in the trash on move-out day last semester — don’t you love those finds? — put all my loose books on it. Well, of course not all of them… I put aside books I’m taking back to school with me and put the others in make-shift shelves I made out of old shoe boxes, and I think there’s still a big box in the attic. How does this happen? Bargin book sales, specifically one in Greenville last summer. I made out with about 45 books for $60 — something my mom found more than a bit excessive. But today, I realized it was a great thing. I hadn’t really been through a lot of the books ever since I picked the 10 or so I wanted to take to school with me; quite frankly, I really had forgotten what I bought. Well, I’m just here to say, I am one expert at book-loving predictions! I found SO many books that I had only recently, maybe in the last six months, put on my must-read list. African literature that I found out about through the African Diaspora lit class I took in the spring, one book by an author that just recently visited my college who I had never heard of prior to his visit — how awesome is that? A good day for Sarah’s book collection, for sure.

– read an intense blog by PANK about race and gender in the literary publication world — intense in that it generated SO many reactions. I think there was something around 49 comments to the post when I read it. It raises some great questions, and I’m really glad Roxane wrote it.